Two weeks ago on this blog, Senior Editor Brian Doherty wrote about a case in Texas that sounds like one of the weirdest and most infuriating abuses of justice you'll see:
"In a federal/local raid earlier this month on a "smoke shop" called the Purple Zone in Alpine, Texas, two sisters running the place were arrested: Ilana and Arielle Lipsen.
Arielle insists she was hit in the head with a rifle by a DEA agent in what she characterized as an unprovoked assault. [...]
Pictures of Lipsen's head with the alleged gun butt wound were taken and spread on Facebook by Tom Cochran, who runs a screen printing shop whose services the Lipsen sisters used. [...]
The document that Ilana Lipsen had to sign to make bond, which I have seen, included this handwritten demand [...]:
"will advice media (Kwest9 news) that he [sic] sister, arielle lipsen, was not beaten by agents carrying/using a M16 rifle, and her sister instigated/assaulted agents."
A NewsWest9 report says Lipsen did, as ordered, recant her original story.
The pictures have now led Cochran to suffer a public call for boycott of his business, Big Bend Screen Printing, from the National Border Patrol Council, an AFL-CIO affiliate union for Border Patrol workers. (Local station NewsWest9 has more on that.)"
So on tonight's live episode of The Independents (Fox Business Network, 9 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. PT, repeats three hours later) we'll have Tom Cochran on to talk about this crazy series of events.
Party Panel this evening consists of New York Times science writer-slash-friend of Reason John Tierney and former Reagan-administration deputy defense secretary K.T. McFarland, who will talk about the two big pieces of news today: the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed rules mandating carbon reductions, and the confusing and contested prisoner swap of five allegedly Taliban-affiliated Guantanamo Bay prisoners for the controversial Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Later in the show the Panel will also discuss
